Here are heroes and goats for some of the women's tournament espnanalytics.com/wcbb-daily-s...

When the Pacers traded their first round pick to the Clippers, they had about a 50% chance of keeping it. They are still around there at 52%. You can see the distribution of potential picks at the link below. espnanalytics.com/nba-picks?te...

At the time of the article, these were the chances to make the top 4 in the West: DEN 59% HOU 55% MIN 52% LAL 31% Now: LAL 95% DEN 53% MIN 29% HOU 23% "The next 10 days are critical for LA, two games v Houston and 1 each v Denver, MIN" - they won all. www.espn.com/nba/story/_/...

Heroes and goats from Day 1 of the NCAA Tournament. espnanalytics.com/mcbb-daily-s...

Meanwhile, in the art of tanking, Alex Sarr has had back-to-back games worth -11 or worse. It would take effort to see how often that happens, but it ain't a lot. Why? Is he that bad? Is he not motivated? Maybe body language says something? I didn't see. espnanalytics.com/nba-box?id=2...

Historically, the Rookie of the Year has gone to the player that people predict to be the best player. And that is tied to draft position, which is why Cooper Flagg has led the race until recently. But Kon Knueppel has played so well and changed the conversation. espnanalytics.com/nba-award-le...

This is how teams break down between starters and the bench. - Denver, Clips, MIN have the biggest decline from starters to the bench - Spurs don't have much drop-off as a top team, consistent with them doing well without Wemby

Jayson Tatum missed a full year, Jaylen Brown picking up a lot of slack. Tatum returns and they return to roles. Brown used ~35% of possessions before Tatum came back. Now w/Tatum on court, he's at ~25%, same as last year. Tatum is a little higher at 28%. Right back to roles.

A "threshold win" is when a player's net points > pts the team won by. The team "would have lost without them." Can do this for entire starting unit - when starters have more net points than the team won by. Lakers do this most, 24 times after last night. espnanalytics.com/nba-box?id=2...

With the talk about Charlotte's starters, I haven't seen as much on Atlanta's starters. They are currently the best lineup in the league, outscoring opponents by ~30 pts/100 poss. Last night, it was +22 on 43 poss. - Every starter is better on both sides when with the starters.

NCAA Team Summary pages now out on ESPNAnalytics.com. - A team's BPI split - Their Four Factors and the 4 Factors Accounting through net points, which is schedule-adjusted - The players on the team and their schedule-adjusted Net Pts espnanalytics.com/mcbb-teams?t...

Bam's Q by Q usage last night: 1: 52% 2: 49% 3: 45% 4: 56% His highest usage in any Q (7+ minutes) all year was 42% before last night. No one else this year had 4 Qs in a game with 45+% usage. Jaylen Brown had 3 Qs in a game, several guys had 2.

Inspired by how the Celtics' bigs were shut down last night vs the Spurs, here are the team defenses best against different positions. - The Spurs force opposing 5s to -1.0 net pts/100 poss, 2nd behind OKC - D vs 1s has the widest variation and strong correlation to overall D

Charlotte's magical starting lineup - their individual offensive and defensive Net Pts per 100 possession when part of it and when not. - Everyone's offense is significantly better, Diabate the least - On defense, each individual is better, but not by so much to be significant

Since the 2023 Championship season, here's how some of the Nuggets' mainstays have done on offense with and without Jokic. - Braun and Murray have declined quite a bit - Gordon has been about equally good. His assists go up without Jokic, though shooting declines

Yesterday's GSW-UTA game is an example of why 4 Factors *Accounting* is useful. The Ws shot 16/52 (31%) from 3, the Jazz 12/34 (35%). Who got more from their 3s? The Ws made more. The Jazz shot it better. Accounting has -0.5 Net Pts for GSW, +4.0 for UTA espnanalytics.com/nba-box?id=2...

The race for #2 in the East: NYK's chances have declined from 56% to 28% in two games in LA The race for #5/#6 in the East: TOR, MIA w/best chances The race for #3/#4 in the West: Really tight Most inconsistent players, Lakers bad fit, ++ www.espn.com/nba/story/_/...

Women's college basketball has a new source of data. ESPN Analytics now has this, a site with the Net Points player metric that is accurate and granular. It paints a broad analytics picture around teams and players, starting with the Daily Summary: espnanalytics.com/wcbb-daily-s...

You can see that Jalen Brunson's defense has actually been good since about mid-January. It was quite bad before then. You know what happened then? Brunson called a players-only meeting. Numbers align with the story well here. espnanalytics.com/nba-player-g...

Next was a fantastic panel on how organizations compete as their analytics increasingly converge at the SSAC with @sethwalder.bsky.social, @deanolytics.bsky.social, Brian Burke, Phil Orlins, & @johnpark52.bsky.social. Highly recommend www.youtube.com/live/SSBw-lY... (3/7)

If you're going to watch the ACC Men's Tournament, here are some of the players, their prospect ranks (consensus), and how Net Pts values them (in college, not projecting to the NBA). espnanalytics.com/mcbb-award-l...

Top rookies - Knueppel is going to have the best numbers. But historically, Flagg would win ROY because people are still projecting him as having the best future. - Several positive rookies is a good sign - Queen and Richard were solid/good to around Christmas, then fell

Tonight's Cleveland-Detroit game is critical for the Cavs if they want a top 2 seed, but not particularly so to maintain a top 4 seed. They face each other next Tuesday and the Cavs would help themselves a lot to win both.

Of the critical games over the last two days, the only team that won was Phoenix last night (and it was critical for the Lakers, too). - PHO has improved chance to 27% for top 6 - LAL at 54%, MIA at 21%, LAC 5% for top 6 - CLE still has a 97% chance at top 4

The Spurs have done pretty well without Wemby this year. Better with him, but still good without. It looks like it's De'Aaron Fox and Keldon Johnson who have done better on offense with Wemby out. Castle has actually done a little better on D.

Got to join the Wharton Moneyball podcast yesterday to talk about the state of the NBA and why @deanolytics.bsky.social belongs in the basketball hall of fame. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

What this basically says is that one of Denver's top 5 critical games the rest of the way to maintaining a top 4 seed is on Sunday @ GSW. They win that game 58% of the time when they stay in the top 4. They win it just 42% when they don't.

You can explain ~60% of the variation on prospect ranks among our top 30 in net pts per game just using that metric and their age. (ValueExp - is a quick transformation of Rank) This is just a quick tell on why best college players aren't best prospects. espnanalytics.com/mcbb-award-l...

These are the records that teams need to have to make the play-in or to achieve a top 6 seed with 90% confidence.

Here are some significant players who have changed teams this and how well they are doing relative to before the trade. Not a lot of games yet, so things haven't stabilized.

This came out. Visual storytelling using Net Points.

Looking at our top 10 NBA prospects in the Draft Simulator, this is how well they've done *against BPI Top 25 opponents* - Best offense is Flemings, Boozer, Lendeborg - Peterson and Lendeborg are high on defense - Wagler, Dybantsa, Brown below avg on D espnanalytics.com/nba-draft-si...

There were 27 college men's games yesterday and the top two players across all of them both came from Louisville. Combining for +41.6 total net points, it was easily the best teammate-game of the year. espnanalytics.com/mcbb-box?id=...

The relationship between possession use, efficiency, and overall productivity, which comes from the book Basketball beyond Paper - Don't have to be as efficient at high usage to be productive. - But small efficiency differences at high usage can lead to large differences in productivity

In the context of the rest of the season, Castle's big night last night was easily his best of the year and still you see the bumpy ups and downs of player performance. espnanalytics.com/nba-player-g...

When a team basically wouldn't have won without a player's performance - we call that a threshold win. And We added it to our MCBB gamelogs. Here is Ebuka Okorie of Stanford, for example, who has 5 threshold W, 0 threshold Ls - best in the Power 5+BE espnanalytics.com/mcbb-player-...

This has to be a fun ride for the Hornets. Their starting lineup is all positive at this point. Miller has been on a tear for 3 weeks, Knueppel has been good since mid-December.

Dylan Harper and VJ Edgecombe are having what I'd call a typical rookie up-and-down season. Typical for a good rookie, that is. Knueppel showed an early flat period, then he took off. Flagg is a little in-between, taking off recently, but still showing ups/downs.

I'm heading to Connecticut in April for the Connecticut Sports Analytics Symposium. Giving a talk with the boring title of Why division of (micro)credit helps in sports The talk should be better than the title. statds.org/events/csas2...

Up to the point of the trade, Jonathan Kuminga - Has never posted a positive season in Net Pts - His offense this year was at its worst - He is at #384 (of 391) in Passing I have to think he will be better where he feels appreciated. But still not good. espnanalytics.com/nba-award-le...

NBA teams and how many times different players led their team in Net Pts - in Wins only. - OKC has 40 wins, SGA has led them in 24 of them. - Naz Reid has led MIN the most in wins, even though Ant has far better overall performance

The UConn men won last night behind Silas DeMary Jr.'s +6.9 total net pts. The Huskies have had 9 different players lead them in 22 wins. Among BPI Top 25 teams, though, Kentucky has had 8 different net pts leaders in their 15 wins. espnanalytics.com/mcbb-daily-s...

Darryn Peterson was clutch last night for KU, posting +4.2 net points when the game was within 5 with 5 min left, best on the team. There isn't a lot of clutch time in college. Peterson only has 18 poss all year and half were last night. espnanalytics.com/mcbb-box?id=...

Syracuse plays UNC tonight and you can get a statistical preview from our Net Pts metrics. For example, here are the ACC's top transition players - Cuse has Donnie Freeman in the top 10 - UNC has Trimble and Wilson espnanalytics.com/mcbb-award-l...

College Basketball Net Points This is the metric we use for player valuation, available at a game or season level, adjusted for schedule or not, with breakdowns of why. For a versatile leaderboard, showing top players across a lot of categories, start here: espnanalytics.com/mcbb-award-l...

College Basketball Net Points This is the metric we use for player valuation, available at a game or season level, adjusted for schedule or not, with breakdowns of why. For a scoreboard, you can start here: espnanalytics.com/mcbb-daily-s...

Following up again on the story of how Kawhi started taking more 3s on 12/20 (www.espn.com/nba/story/_/...) - He was at +40 net pts over 17 games, then +108 in next 18 Gs - He was at +10 in net pts on 3s, +37 since. The 27 pt improvement is almost the whole O increase. Rest is on D

Jarrett Allen's huge night last night - his best of the year. But he did have a great one back on 11/5 against Philly, too. He had 5 games of at least 8 net points last year. This was his second this year. espnanalytics.com/nba-player-g...

One year ago, Luka Doncic was traded for Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and a future first. Since then - Luka Doncic was 13.6 wins above replacement - AD has 1.6 - Christie has 2.0

SAC traded Keon Ellis over the weekend. He was one of their most valued assets, but has played poorly this year. He was valued because his prior work was good enough to project a good future, but metrics are uncertain: - EPM expected -1.5 - LEBRON -0.5 - DARKO +0.4 - xRAPM +1.3